'India's time wasting tactics funny'

Cheteshwar Pujara cut a lonely figure after India A went down tamely to their West Indian counterparts, as he sat eating a meal in a corner but it may not have been the defeat that really rattled him. He flopped twice in the four-day game and with a long season set to start, that would not have been an ideal launchpad.

The normally noisy fans around the dressing-rooms were silent and subdued as they watched their team get mauled by spin, the supposed forte of Indian teams for years. They were stunned. Indian fans take defeats badly, even if it was just an A team but Pujara, the skipper was obviously far more balanced. His decision to bowl, even after winning the toss surprised the West Indians too and Pujara was at pains to explain the logic.

"The decision to bowl was wrong; we should have batted. But since we had three fast bowlers, the coach and selectors wanted to see if the fast bowlers could have delivered in these conditions. But the wicket was really slow and it did not help us at all. We thought there would be help for the seamers but clearly that did not happen."

Pujara's West Indian counterpart Kirk Edwards felt the fact that he played two spinners instead of India's one could have made the difference at the end of the day: "The toss was important. Our two spinners have bowled a lot of overs for the country and they understand this kind of wicket and they knew they had to be patient. This experience has taught us a lot. India thought the pitch would seam and they told us the same thing but the spinners made the difference," Edwards said after the game.

Pujara insisted that every game was important to him and he was disappointed that he failed to get a big one here but he appeared less ruffled than Manpreet Juneja who held both innings together, scoring 154 runs, and got into altercations with various West Indian fielders, including one with Miller where the umpire had to intervene.

"The Indians were trying to waste time and we thought that was funny, so we just laughed. There were no harsh words exchanged or anything. We knew we had enough time to bowl them out and that was why we had declared overnight," Edwards said, tongue in cheek.